udge aforesaid to be
whipped or otherwise punished as he thought fit, which was executed
frequently in the most cruel and barbarous manner, by dragging him
through ditches and other nasty places, tearing his clothes off his
back, and even endangering his life.

One West, who had got amongst them, being arrested by John Errington,
who carried him to his house by Wapping Wall, the Shelterers in the New
Mint no sooner heard thereof, but assembling on a Sunday morning in a
great number, with guns, swords, staves, and other offensive weapons,
they went to the house of the said John Errington, and there terrifying
and affrighting the persons in the house rescued John West, pursuant, as
they said, to their oaths, he being registered as a protected person in
their books of the Seven Cities of Refuge. In this expedition Charles
Towers was very forward, being dressed with only a blue pea-jacket,
without hat, wig or shirt, with a large stick like a quarter-staff in
his hand, his face and breast being so blackened that it appeared to be
done with soot and grease, contrary to the Statute made against those
called The Waltham Blacks, and done after the first day of June, 1723,
when that Statute took place.

Upon an indictment for this, the fact being very fully and dearly
proved, notwithstanding his defence, which was that he was no more
disguised than his necessity obliged him to be, not having wherewith to
provide himself clothes, and his face perhaps dirty and daubed with mud,
the jury found him guilty, and he thereupon received sentence of death.

Before the execution of that sentence, he insisted strenuously on his
innocence as to the point on which he was found guilty and condemned,
viz., having his face blacked and disguised within the intent and
meaning of the Statute, but he readily acknowledged that he had been
often present and assisted at such mock courts of justice as were held
in the New Mint, though he absolutely denied sitting as judge when one
Mr. Westwood, a bailiff, was most abominably abused by an order of that
pretended court. He seemed fully sensible of the ills and injuries he
had committed by being concerned amongst such people, but often said
that he thought the bailiffs had sufficiently revenged themselves by the
cruel treatment they had used the riotous persons with, when they fell
within their power, particularly since they hacked and chopped a
carpenter's right arm in such a manner that it was obliged t